Has Anyone Tried this Powder Measure...

R

RiverRider

New member
I have been wanting to buy a measure that will dispense extruded powders like H4831 and Retumbo with real consistency. I have been looking at the Quick Measure for a while:

http://www.quick-measure.com/

The fellow who makes and sells these says if I am not happy with it I can return it, and that's really fair enough but if I can avoid any hassle by learning from someone else's experience then I'd choose to do it that way.

I have owned the RCBS Chargemaster, and there's not a thing wrong with it. I sold mine because I figured I'd rather have the money tied up in component (this was back in the fall of 2008). I could just buy another one, but I'd rather have a simpler gadget to do the same job, IF such a thing exists.

It seems like everywhere I ask this question, the cult of Lee descends upon me and tries to tell me a $23 powder measure will drop exactly the same charge of H4831 every time. Fact is, I have tried it every way it can be done and even some ways it can't, and it just will not work to my satisfaction. It's not too bad with Re15, but it is nowhere near perfect consistency with H4831. I can only conclude they think the "Perfect" powder measure is perfect because they're weighing their charges on a Lee balance beam scale---another piece of junk masquerading as reloading equipment.

Anyway, I am not here to bash Lee stuff. I just want to hear of any first hand experiences with the Quick Measure. Thanks in advance.
 
No volumetric measure will deliver the consistancy that a chargemaster will do with extruded powders. Most volumetric measure will whip a chargemaster when ball powders are used. The electronic scale +/- .1 is the issue with a chargemaster. Typical spread with volume measures is +/- .3+ with extruded and +/-.03 with fine ball in PPC quantities and a chargemaster is +/- .08 with any powder. The chargemaster can also have severe problems if static is present on the cover, pan, platen, or scale housing.
 
It looks to use the same principal as the Belding and mall. That one is made out of Brass and steel.
They are on Ebay at times, Its fairly accurate .
 
Interesting! Since I use a Chargemaster for extruded powders I'm not interested in buying one, but an excellent video Joe! Surprising accuracy with 4831 which does you not usually doesn't meter worth a hoot. The hopper seems to be a little small for charging large capacity cases with full powder charges, but otherwise very interesting and sufficiently accurate for most uses.

I've got to agree with RiverRider on the Lee measure. Two or three years ago I bought one because of its reputation for throwing accurate charges of extruded powders. Maybe I'm just less coordinated than average or something, but I can throw more uniform charges with my Redding or Harrell's measures and they take 1/10th of the time to adjust along with being much easier to reset to a previous setting.
 
For throwing course powder that is probably the best measure available but with the usual caveats. I compared it to some other commonly used measures by doing 100 throws each and it was by far the best for throwing Varget followed by the $20. Lee which did good but not quite like the Quick-Measure. The standard type measures commonly cut kernels (the expensive benchrest models I tried were the worst) which was really bad for keeping throws of Varget consistant. The QM does occasionally choke on a piece of Varget and binds up but it's obvious and you just dump out the partial throw and start over.

Most of the deviation in a manual thrower is human induced since we can't repeat the handle motion the same every time and so the powder is released into the cavity differently from throw to throw and If you hesitate just a bit too long on either stroke or dwell too long at the top of the throw they dump differently and when combined with the inherent difficulties with coarse powders repeatedly throwing to the tenth is just not possible.


The fellow in the video has it right in that if you throw 50 rounds most will be real close but then some will be out a couple tenths and finally a smaller amount will be off by maybe almost a half a grain and this is the reason why it doesn't matter which thrower you use for stick powder since this deviation is probably too much for mid to long range shooters and they end up weighing it anyways to avoid shooting the few bad rounds which leads back to the $20. Lee as a good choice and using the extra money for a better scale since that's where the rubber meets the road anyways.

The video shows him dumping the charge into a funnel and then into the shell which would likely never be done unless your just using them for hunting rounds and surely he did that for demonstration and I found that the measure is really quick in that you just need one hand to hold your scale's pan under the measure to dispense a charge with no levers involved and then put the pan right on the scale to trickle up to weight and really seems to speed up the process when doing 50 or 100 rounds. Only negative for me is the powder adjustment knob is not the repeatable micrometer type and a little fiddly till you dial in the charge but then things are good to go.

As an experiment throw 10 charges on your Lee using a slow stroke then 10 with a quicker cadence and you will see 2 distinct loads for each rythm and the reason why these little devices are only a small part of the problem and we are the biggest.
 
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If you are going to throw light and trickle (my standard procedure for coarse powder), why bother worrying about how accurate the measure is? I would just pick one that is easy to adjust and get on with it. BTW I have figured out how to throw directly into a scale pan while it is on the scale, without having powder bounce out. Try that sometime. It is harder than it sounds.
 
O.K. Boyd now you have to spill the beans on your powder handling trick.
 
I bet i have an idea how to?? I will let Mr Allen tell us how though,that way if i am wrong nobody be me will know!! LOL!!! Boyd is one smart cookie. it would be wise to listen. Boyd does a lot of testing with ideas and concepts such as this. He is very informational! Lee
 
If you will loosen the screw that holds the handle on the Lee measure just enough so that it moves smoothly then stroke the handle up and down smoothly with out bumping at the top or bottom they will throw as consistently as any measure made, if thats not good enough for you you will have to weigh.
 
The first problem is slowing the powder down. I did this by using a spring clamp (happened to have one) to position and hold a plastic powder funnel at an angle, at the bottom of the drop tube. This left me with the bounce problem when the powder hit the empty pan. I solved this with a strip of foam adhesive tape that I rubbed with some powder (HBN or ws2) to make its surface and edges less sticky. I put the tape on the pan ( not all over, just where it needed to be) and then made a note of the increased weight of the pan, and adjusted my scale setting to produce charges of the desired weight. The other parts that I used were a USB webcam, and a RCBS trickler (bottom cavity filled with lead). I bounced a fair amount of powder onto my desk top while figuring this out. With a digital scale, that worked without delay when trickling, this whole thing would be a lot easier. You could design whatever pan you liked, and simply use the tare feature to zero the scale. I did it with my old RCBS 10-10. By throwing the charge only slightly under weight, the trickling time becomes rather short.
 
The most accurate measure I have thrown coarse 4831 with is the Bonanza Benchrest Powder Measure marketed by Forester.
 
Joe S,
Excellent job. Thank you. What video camera, and what settings did you use? I think that this is a very fine way to communicate, much better for showing an operation than words alone, or a still picture. Perhaps this will encourage others to do the same.
Boyd
 
I have bought the thing. I spoke to Tim Johnson, the man who invented and sells these. He was kind enough to take the time to answer all my questions and told me that his "no BS" guarantee is that if the measure does not perform up to MY expectations, I can send it back for a refund. He related to me that he had made one of these for himself about 50 years ago after he had purchased 100 pounds of H4831, whereupon I could not restrain myself from laughing. I certainly can understand the motivation!

After having seen Joe's video, I am very willing to give this thing a try. I think that maybe with very careful and consistent technique, it might be made to dispense charges consistently enough for general purpose sporter weight rifle ammo.
 
Boyd Allen said:
Joe S,
Excellent job. Thank you. What video camera, and what settings did you use? I think that this is a very fine way to communicate, much better for showing an operation than words alone, or a still picture. Perhaps this will encourage others to do the same.
Boyd
Click to expand...

Boyd the camera is a Sony Cyber Shot H-9. I used the video setting and my chrono tripod to hold it in place.
I`m glad you liked it, I am not real happy with it, the narration was not as easy to come up with off the top of my head as I thought it would be. I felt like Obama without his tele-prompter. The video however shows pretty well what I wanted it to.
Thanks for the encouragment.
 
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